Touting Generosity on Feb. 14

The Valentine’s Day of the
past: men run out and buy boxes of chocolate and bouquets of
flowers for their significant others, not sure what they are getting
but wanting to do what is expected.

Chocolate corporations make a killing (figuratively and
literally). Kids in school fill out numerous cards, stressing
about whether the cute red-haired girl (Charlie Brown’s love) or the
athletic young fellow will care more about their card than anyone
else’s. Greeting card companies make a killing.

Valentine’s Day as it is transitioning today into something more
responsible: fair trade chocolate, roses and wine (especially
in Manitoba) are purchased with a message of both love and global
awareness. A pilot project in Winnipeg and Gimli sold out of
fair trade roses brought in from Kenya and Ecuador last week, with a
larger initiative being planned for Mother’s Day in May.
Similar efforts took place in large cities across Canada.

The Valentine’s Day of the future: the name is changed to
Generosity Day, with people going out of their way to do something for
others, in their immediate lives and around the world. This
is the vision of several Americans involved in the charitable sector
who in 2011 decided that Valentine’s Day had lost its way.
They felt that it could be rebooted to be less commercial and more
spontaneous, less self-centred and more socially responsible.

Using social media to showcase their idea, the group created Spread
Generosityand a Facebook page and blog, inviting people to report
on their “random” acts of kindness, from handing out food to the
homeless to making donations for the purchase of anti-malarial bed
nets. For 2013, a million people were invited to connect to
Generosity Day blogs to report what they had done that they felt was
altruistic and meaningful on February 14.

I am someone who enjoys buying his spouse flowers any time of the
year. However, I know that this industry contributes to a
number of social and environmental problems in the developing countries
where flowers are grown “year-round.”

Cut flowers are brought in from East Africa and Latin
America. They are grown on land that should be used for food
rather than luxury export agriculture. Jobs are not well paid
and often not safe as people handle chemical inputs with little
regulation. Aquifers are drained in drought-prone areas to
force quick growth of the flowers, so that lakes in these areas are
actually shrinking. Air freighting the flowers to the North
adds to the world’s over-supply of climate-changing pollution.

The cocoa industry has enjoyed the attention of this column
before. Chocolate is one of the worst offenders in the battle
against child slavery, and control of cocoa production in West Africa,
where 80% of it is grown, has been implicated in on-going wars in
destabilized countries such as Ivory Coast and Mali. While
fair trade chocolate is becoming more available on our grocery store
shelves, we are still complicit in allowing our enjoyment of seemingly
innocent treats to blind us to the oppression they represent.

You may not have heard of Generosity Day, but you may have felt that
the bloom is off Valentine’s Day. In our busy world, it often
seems like just another obligation to get and spend and fit into a
schedule with little real thought. A quickly purchased and
over-priced card, cut flowers and chocolates that are beautiful and
tasty only to those of us privileged enough to enjoy them.

Acts of generosity can change the world but also will change us as we
see what we are capable of, what impact our generosity has, and what
feedback we receive. It is not only individuals, but also
organizations, faith communities and businesses who are taking
generosity seriously, and at least adding fair trade options to their
daily lives, their operations and their inventories.

Despite my involvement in fair trade Valentine’s Day initiatives, I
wasn’t aware of Generosity Day until I openly expressed my frustration
with the self-centredness and stress of the day. And it was
one of my adult children who sent me the on-line link to Generosity
Day.

Thus, I am hopeful that it is our young, activist generation that will
champion that future celebration of love that I spoke of
earlier. Zack Gross works
for the Manitoba Council for International
Co-operation (MCIC), a
coalition of more than 40 international development organizations.